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India surpasses China as largest lender for Sri Lanka in 2022

19 Sep, 2022

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By Easwaran Rutnam

India has emerged as the largest bilateral lender for Sri Lanka in 2022, overtaking China.

All India Radio reported that India has provided a total of 968 million US dollars in loans to the island nation in four months of 2022.

Sources told Colombo Gazette that the loans provided by India in 2022 includes the Indian Line-of-Credit provided for the much needed fuel for Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka had urgently sought fuel on credit after the country faced a serious shortage on USD to purchase fuel.

In the past five years from 2017-2021, China has been the largest bilateral lender to Sri Lanka.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has been the largest multilateral lender in the past five years and disbursed funds amounting to 610 million dollars in 2021, All India Radio reported.

India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ruchira Kamboj had said that India had provided nearly 4 billion dollars in food and financial assistance to Sri Lanka.

On August 22, India handed over 21,000 tonnes of fertilizer to crisis-ridden Sri Lanka.

India has been at forefront of extending economic assistance to Sri Lanka as per their requirements and is one of the countries that have provided the maximum amount of assistance in time of need.

Since the beginning of 2022, Sri Lanka has experienced an escalating economic crisis and the government has defaulted on its foreign loans.

Sri Lanka is battling a severe economic crisis with food and fuel scarcity affecting a large number of the people in the island nation. (Colombo Gazette)

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